


Stop all the clocks

by lionsmay



Category: Black Sails
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2019-01-05 22:17:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12198477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionsmay/pseuds/lionsmay
Summary: Miranda Hamilton reflects in time with the ticking of the grandfather clock. She hears the clock tick as her husband kisses her lover and she knows that that kiss has changed their lives forever.





	Stop all the clocks

Miranda Hamilton heard the grandfather clock tick away the seconds.

Her father-in-law’s heavy scent still lingered in the air, but the poisonous fever Alfred Hamilton had stoked with every vile syllable and every venomous glance had been broken. James had broken it. He had broken it with an outpouring of words, a passionate defence of Thomas and — she knew the timing was no accident — of her. 

But in breaking this fever James had shattered something else too: the illusion they had all struggled to maintain, even amongst themselves, that James was Thomas’ confidant and her lover.

“People can say what they like about you.” James set his jaw against the tears that choked his voice and swam in his eyes. “But you’re a good man. More people should say that. And someone should be willing to defend it.”

In that moment he was more beautiful and more profoundly himself than she had ever seen him: defiant and abashed; furious and tender.

Miranda’s heart broke a little in time with the ticking of the clock.

 

There had been other men for Miranda; of course there had been others. Her reputation as one of the most notorious women in London was not entirely a fabrication. There had been men with whom she shared stimulating conversations and even more stimulating nights. There had been men who satisfied her, men who amused her and men she had esteemed.

But _this_ man had been different. This man, with his clear-eyed gaze, his fury, and his heart like a plucked chord vibrating in tune with her own.  Something inside her had called out to him and thrilled at what it found: an answering wildness and a deeper black. 

This man she had wanted, not for pleasure or to pass the time. This man she had wanted to keep.

 

Miranda heard the clock tick. Her eyes flickered over to her husband, still reeling from James’ words. He seemed to stagger under the weight of them before rising, slowly but steadily, and crossing the room toward his friend, stopping a single step closer than usual.  

Miranda watched Thomas hesitate, a split-second of indecision, before, ducking slightly, he brought his face down to meet James.’ Miranda watched James flinch, an instinct.  

And then, from her place across the table, Miranda saw the expression that flooded his face. Not shame or desire or even recognition but supplication. _Relief_. The kiss to come would be the answer to storm of questions that had raged in his blood since the first time he had heard Thomas speak.

James had learned at an early age that, were he ever to have a chance at mastery over his life, he would need to master himself. It was a lesson hard-won. He had become a man used to control. But in that moment, with Thomas’ lips a breath away from his, Miranda saw him surrender. She saw him look at Thomas with heartbreaking trust and carefully, deliberately, put himself in the other man’s hands. 

The vulnerability would both terrify and delight him. She would know. She had felt it herself.

 

At first she had delighted in James’ obvious attraction to her and in his half-hearted attempts to conceal it; she had revelled in the smile that would play at his lips when she spoke and the way his eyes followed her as she moved across a room. There is nothing so delicious as the upper hand in a flirtation.But somewhere down the line, her hand had slipped. She fell in love with him. 

 

Miranda heard the clock tick. She watched her husband press her lover’s lips to his. She watched Thomas cup James’ face in one of his strong hands, running a thumb gently along the sharp angle of his jaw. 

It was a caress she recognized. She had done it once herself.

 

For a time Miranda thought she could have it all in James: a lover, a friend, a co-conspirator, and, perhaps most importantly of all, a lieutenant in the fight to protect Thomas from himself. And if she was honest with herself, she had felt some claim to him. After all, she had been the first to take James into her bed; she had been the first to watch him while he slept, and the first to see the early morning sunlight set his copper eyelashes ablaze as he woke.

But that claim, too, had been an illusion. It was Thomas who had brought James into their home and their lives. It was Thomas who would have it all. It was always meant to be him.

The two of them were to be the architects of a new world. And although they extended to her an invitation into that glorious realm of creation, she was acutely aware that her presence required one. The door did not stand open to her and she could not compete with what happened within those hallowed walls. Instead, she stood outside and defended it. 

Miranda loved her husband. There was not a woman in all of England who loved her husband more. And though some of those women may have pitied Miranda, she knew there was more trust, respect, and real intimacy between her and Thomas than in all the marriages of their friends combined. They were partners in the truest sense: united in mind and in spirit. 

She loved him for his ideas and his ambition; she loved him more for his generosity and his compassion. But to love Thomas, as she suspected James would soon learn, was something more akin to veneration. To bask in the glow of his firmament was a heady thing, but it could also be lonely. Loving Thomas required a flesh-and-blood compatriot, someone who also had their feet firmly planted in the dirt. In that sense, she supposed, she and James would only become closer.  

Thomas cared so much for the happiness of others and asked for so little in return. And so there was nothing you could deny him. 

What to others might have been simple jealousy or betrayal was for Miranda a bittersweet acceptance of the inevitable. She had been deceiving herself. Anyone could have seen what was happening. No, she corrected herself, chilled at the thought, not anyone. Only those trained by a lifetime of carefully guarded secrets; on those fluent in the tongue of bated breath and pregnant pauses. Only those who could read a message in a glance.

 

Miranda heard the clock tick. She had honed this ability over the years — to hear without listening. She had learned to absorb just enough gossip to know how to protect them, but not enough to wound her. She told Thomas and James that she did not mind what was said about her, and for the most part that was true. What she did not tell them was that she had learned that insensibility painfully, like building a callous after months of blisters.

Miranda heard the clock tick as her husband kissed her lover and she heard it as he drew him away. She heard the clock tick and she knew that that kiss had changed their lives.

 

What the kiss unlocked, and how it would shift the gears of their relationships at home was something they could manage. _She_ would manage it. Thomas had a tendency to charge toward things, not seeking danger but simply heedless of it. She loved him for that, too. He relied on her to protect him. He must be free to chase his ideas and she must be there to see him safely home. This was not her burden; it was the sword she offered in service of his better world.

She would steer and counsel and strategize. It would not be simple, but it would at least be safe.

But what mighttranspire if that kiss were discovered was something else entirely. What the three of them had been was easy to explain and easier to dismiss: a woman and a pair of hopeless would-be radicals. A cuckold, albeit one with certain rumoured predilections; an adulteress and her little piece of rough. But now? With the inevitable finally come to pass and their aim within their reach? They could have either a love that flouted convention or a vision that defied politics. One or the other was eccentricity; combined they were nothing short of revolution. 

She would redouble her efforts. She would demur and deflect and dissemble; she would attempt to reduce rumour to rubble with a laugh. These were the things that needed to be done and she would be the one to do them. It was who she was. It was who he needed her to be. She stood shoulder to shoulder with greatness and greatness always demanded a price. And if sometimes she was tired and if sometimes she hurt, that, too, was the price she paid. The price she paid in service of better world.

 

Miranda thought all of this as she sat alone at the table with the grandfather clock ticking away theseconds. When eventually the clock chimed the hour, she stood and she walked away, leaving the table and the room with the clock in it. 

The ticking, though, seemed to follow her for hours. Alone in her room, she wondered if she might hear it for the rest of her days.


End file.
